Watch me crash and burn in Destiny’s Sparrow Racing League

It’s the Sparrow Racing League! All the drama of racing an actual rocket between your legs, plus course hazards such as very angry Taken Phalanx troops who are looking to turn your favourite ride into scrap. Destiny’s Sparrow have always had the potential to be more than just glorified courier vehicles that get you from murder point A to murder point B.

A racing league has been teased since the very beginning of Destiny, and now, said extra genre is here and available to anyone who put the Taken King in his place. And it’s a refreshing pull back into the world of Destiny.

The Sparrow Racing League certainly is…different. If you’re in any way familiar with just how Sparrows work in Destiny, you’ll know that they’re floaty speed demons with a generous turning curve. Sparrows work as they’re intended to right now, able to quickly shunt to the side or apply the brakes for a tight bit of cornering.

The challenge here, comes in the form of creating a track that suits that style of driving. You’ve got Mars, a beginner-friendly track with wide turns, great straights and obstacles which include those damn fan-blades of death. As a track that gets you up to speed on how the SRL works, it is magnificent. Here’s Gavin and I in action on it:

Venus is a bit different. It’s a damn good track, but one that is let down by the user interface of Destiny. It’s more of a straight mad dash forward with few corners, but the tighter and more claustrophobic design doesn’t gel well with all the information being thrown at your face at high speed. With all of those gamer tags and explosions in the way, it’s pretty damn difficult to see anything on the track.

But as an experimental event, I’m loving it. It’s Destiny’s version of Wipeout, only with far more death. The actual balance of maintaining a lead is a huge challenge, as the course shifts the size of boost gates to create narrower windows of opportunity for you to pass through them. Just about anyone can win a race with sheer blind luck. Just ask Gavin.

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